While in hospital, “Hoffi” Hoffmann, who has a record for criminal assault, meets Urban, an engineer who has worked on numerous building projects in other communist countries. To emulate him, Hoffi starts working in construction. On a large site in Saxony, he meets student trainee Gila and falls in love. With the support of his crew, Hoffi manages to follow Gila to East Berlin, where it turns out that she is pregnant … Director Ingrid Reschke, one of the few female directors working at East Germany’s state film studio DEFA, uses the re-integration into society of a convicted young offender to depict societal problems – young rowdies, a housing shortage in the East German capital, child neglect by single mothers. Shot largely on location, the film hews to the tradition of the “Berlin films” of the 1950s and 1960s to depict a tolerant, cosmopolitan society. In addition to Urban and a committed social worker, members of East Germany’s Socialist Unity Party also have a hand in making the prophecy expressed in the film’s working title,
“even problem children can become people”, come true. Ingrid Reschke died as the result of a car accident shortly after the film was completed.
GDR 1971, b/w, DCP, digitally restored version 2018 (35mm), 96mins. With English subtitles.
Directed by Ingrid Reschke, Script: Ingrid Reschke, Ulrich Plenzdorf, based on reports by Gisela Karau in the „BZ am Abend“ (Berlin Evening Newspaper), Assistant Director: Marie-Luise Ullmann, Direcdtor of Photography: Claus Neumann, Editor: Barbara Simon, Music: Rudi Werion, Sound: Werner Krehbiel, Harry Fuchs, Klaus Wolter, Production Design: Heike Bauersfeld, Costumes: Katrin Johnsen. With Berndt Renné, Jenny Gröllmann, Harald Wandel, Irma Münch, Manfred Karge, Katja Paryla, Jürgen Heinrich, Thomas Neumann.
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